Composition of Lipid Classes in the Morphologically Different Parts of the Olive Fruit, cv. Coratina (Olea europaea Linn.)

This paper reports on the distribution of “minor components” of olive oil in the four parts of olive fruit. The minor components are the nonglyceridic classes of compounds comprising vegetable oils. It was found that the classes and amounts of minor components varied to a great extent in the lipid fractions from skin, pulp, wood shell and seed. For 100 g of olives the weights of material comprising the minor components extracted by chloroform‐ethanol (95:5) were the following: 103 mg in the skin, 200 mg in the pulp, 30 mg in the wood shells and 80 mg in the seeds. When the minor components were chromatographed by column chromatography or on thin‐layer plates, the following classes of compounds were separated: alkanes, alkyl esters, methyl phenyl esters, steryl esters, aldehydes, alcohols, sterols, cyclic triterpenoids and very long chain free fatty acids.